Page 44 of The Pleasure of Panic

I snatch the nightie—it really doesn’t qualify as a nightie. People don’t wear open-tit lingerie to bed. People wear open-tit lingerie to sex clubs. Which is where I thought I was going tonight.

“You gonna put it on?” Finn asks.

I open my eyes, snatch the… costume… out of his hands, throw it over my shoulder, and say, “Not in your dreams, playboy.”

But he’s already reaching into the bag again. “Je-sus,” he says, his voice low, almost a whisper. Like he’s found buried treasure. “Holy shit. You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

He’s looking at my boots now. Black. Thigh-high. Grommets and laces all the way up the back. Made of latex.

He drops them to the floor. “What’s this?”

I take a deep, deep breath.

“OK,” he says, waving the riding crop in the air. “Hold on, sister. We gotta get this out of the way before we go any further.”

My blood pressure is rising so rapidly, my head begins to pound.

“Do you like to dish it out?” He whips the crop back and forth in the air so it makes that whoosh sound. “Or do you like to be the one being dished on?”

I grab the crop, pull it out of his hand, and hide it behind my back. “Are you done?”

“I don’t think so.” He laughs as he reaches back into the bag and removes nipple clamps. “My God,” he says, looking at them in the palm of his hand, then at my tits, then at them again.

“OK, all very funny,” I say, trying to be nonchalant. “We’re done here. I’m gonna sleep on the couch in my clothes, you’re going to your room. Good night.”

“Oh.” He grins. “Oh, no, no, no. I mean… come on, Issy.”

“Come on what?”

He walks towards me.

I back away.

But his long arms—damn his long arms—reach around behind my back and take the crop.

I give up and don’t fight him. Fuck it, right? Just let him have his fun. He’ll tire himself out like a child and then he’ll let it go.

But he whacks me on the ass so hard with the crop, I jump. “What the fuck?”

“Did it make you wet?”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m insane? Woman, you’re the one who went out on a date with me tonight and packed kink!”

“It wasn’t a date. It was a game.”

“Oh, excuse me,” he says, closing his eyes and placing a mea culpa hand over his heart. “You’re the one who let me take you out with the intention of putting all this on.”

He opens his eyes.

We stare at each other.

“So,” he says, reaching for my wrists and pulling me towards him. His chest is hot. And bare. And muscular. He smells faintly of aftershave. And sweat. And the city. He smells like sex, I realize. Because I already let him fuck me. We’ve already done this. “This is your fantasy, huh?”

I look up at him. I have to crane my neck back to see his face because he’s so tall. “So what?”

“Then let’s do it.”